Texas Tech basketball: 3 key matchups to watch as Tech hosts Kansas

As the Texas Tech basketball team faces Kansas tonight in Lubbock, keep an eye on these three critical individual matchups.

If Chris Beard’s team wants to get off to a positive start in Big 12 play, it is going to have to walk up to the biggest bully on the block and land a haymaker.  That’s because Tech will open the league portion of the schedule with a home tilt against Kansas.

All-time, this series has been rather lopsided.  That’s not surprising given the overall history of the two programs.  KU holds a 37-6 edge over the Red Raiders and took both games in the series a season ago.  And Beard acknowledges that opening the league schedule with such a tough test is not necessarily ideal.

"“We’re excited about this challenge,” he said when speaking to the media on Tuesday.  “Don’t know if I’m excited about maybe the best team in college basketball coming in here Thursday.  But we are excited about the opportunity to compete."

Thus far, KU is 6-1 on the season earning them a no. 5 national ranking.  Their only loss came in the first game of the year against top-ranked Gonzaga, a 12-point defeat.  Since then, they’ve secured wins over no. 20 Kentucky and no. 8 Creighton among others.

As is usually the case with the Jayhawks, offense is what they are built around.  Averaging 81.5 points per game, KU is third in the Big 12 in scoring.  They are led by freshman forward Jalen Wilson and his 15.6 p.p.g.

Defensively, KU is merely average statistically.  Allowing 67.5 points per game, they rank 5th in the Big 12.  However, Beard believes that this Jayhawk squad is better on that end of the floor than the stats may suggest.

"“…in my opinion, this is a really, really good defensive team,” he said.  “All Kansas teams are, but this team has got something special going on on the defensive end.  They’re manufacturing a lot of their offense from their defense.  They’ve got multiple players that can impact the game with steals.  They’ve got rim protection.  They’ve got the ability to switch…in my opinion, it looks like coach [Bill] Self is really trying to get this team going defensively to create offense…”"

If KU is truly as stout defensively as Beard believes, Tech will need to force some turnovers to get easy buckets.  That’s something that Tech has done well this year as Beard’s team leads the conference by forcing an average of 20.5 turnovers per contest.  Meanwhile, Kansas is fourth-best in the league at taking care of the ball only giving it away 12.8 times a game.

One other stat to keep a close eye on tonight is rebounding.  That’s an area of the game where KU leads the Big 12 by pulling down an average of 43.7 per game.  Meanwhile, Tech sits at no. 7 by grabbing 37.8 per game.

As is the case with any basketball game, this game will come down to matchups.  So let’s break down three key matchups that will likely swing the balance of this contest.  And we will start with the one-on-one showdown everyone will be watching.